


Lesser Evil

by ModernWizard



Series: Alison Wonderland [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: All of the Bill + Razor goofy snark but none of the betrayal and death!, Anyone who thinks that Cyber people are not people will be summarily ignored, Bill Potts Deserves Better, Cyber people are disabled people, Cyber people are people too, Cyber people deserve better, Disabled Characters, Gen, Lesbians in Space, Life After the Doctor, No Lesbians Die, Repersoning, S10 rewrite in less than 8.5K words GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, The Master digs into the "aging queen" role with gusto, The Twelfth Doctor is a shit, disability rights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25364272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernWizard/pseuds/ModernWizard
Summary: Trapped in a scuzzy Cyber dystopia, partially Cyber-converted Bill runs the anti-Cyber resistance with her ally Razor. [Yeah, she knows who he is.] While they're overthrowing a totalitarian regime, she's also sending out distress signals for some sexy woman to rescue her. Then Clara shows up... It goes without saying, right, that this is a prequel for Where There's Life, There's Hope? Originally published in the charity fanthology Master Works: Companions Meet the Doctor's Greatest Frenemy.
Relationships: Clara Oswin Oswald & Bill Potts, The Master (Simm) & Bill Potts
Series: Alison Wonderland [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/710001
Kudos: 4





	Lesser Evil

---  
  
Bill maneuvers her power wheelchair on a flat, muddy path through Butcher’s Block’s rusted warehouses. She gags on the morning fog. Her gas mask only cuts so much pollution. _Awful, this,_ she thinks to Razor. Though she doesn’t have psychic powers, Razor does, so she lets him read her mind.

_You_ are _on Offal Lane,_ he puns. He, cozy in their basement flat, has the spirit for wordplay, while Bill’s out on a street named for the human remains dumped here from the Cyber foundries. _What’s so awful? The route?_

_The city,_ Bill mutters. It’s run by a dictator, Surgeon/General Irons, whose Night Patrol (NP) snatches people from poor neighborhoods. Stripped of flesh and free will, they become Cyber soldiers, invading solar farms and dying for Irons’ amusement. If that weren’t bad enough, the colony ship _Newland,_ of which the city takes up a floor, verges on a black hole. She and Razor are trapped in the universe’s arsehole because the Doctor doesn’t care. _Just call it Awful,_ Bill adds. _Truth in advertising._

_That’s why I call it Dystopiaville,_ Razor says. The city was nameless until he arrived several years before Bill. _It’s an honest name, but promising: the kind of place where I can liberate a Cyber army, overthrow a fascist regime, and—_

_And establish freedom for Cyborganics, universal health care, and mascara for all,_ Bill finishes. She’s heard his prospective reforms before.

Bill knows little about Razor, though she suspects he’s not human. When young, he became a soldier against his will. He finally deserted, exhausted and disabled from fighting. His superiors captured him on Earth and dragged him home to torture him into submission. He escaped on his own, no thanks to the Doctor, who left him half dead, in chronic pain, with reduced stamina.

Now he runs Razor’s Resistance (RR). RR spies on the NP, warns citizens of potential raids, sabotages Cyber foundries, and rescues imprisoned people. Most importantly, RR extracts partly converted people from Floor 1056 General Hospital, just as Razor did with Bill. Razor then repersons them, removing Cyber chips from their brains, though he can’t restore their flesh. The newly autonomous people, called Cyborganics, then rejoin city life covertly, avoiding NPs.

_The route is fine,_ Bill says _. —Smooth enough for Cyborganics with crutches or chairs._

_Good for transporting people to safe houses,_ Razor agrees, _and low-risk; the NP doesn’t canvass much in that zone. Now come back. Your evil overlord has orders._

Razor’s humor reminds Bill of Missy, the Doctor’s longtime frenemy. Both she and Razor live their lives as witty antiheroes in melodramas about the Doctor. Even though Razor speaks with venom about the Doctor, he keeps bringing them up. It sounds like they’re exes.

Mostly, though, Razor reminds Bill of Professor Panjandrum, self-referential villain of _Defenders of Earth._ She clung to two things among foster homes: _Defenders_ and her mum’s speculative fiction paperbacks. _Defenders_ convinced her that space was full of dazzle and promise. Her mum’s library inspired hope. Maybe Bill, Black and blue-collar, didn’t fit in on Earth, working in the canteen at White, bourgeois St. Luke’s University. But she might find other constellations in which to shine.

She hasn’t yet, but she will. Just before the Doctor let her die at the top of _Newland,_ they told her to wait for them. But Bill won’t; she has a resistance to run and distress signals to send. Because the black hole distorts time, mere minutes have passed since her death at the top of the ship, where the Doctor is; however, here, at _Newland’s_ bottom, she and Razor have collaborated for a year. Hopefully a sexy woman will respond to Bill’s messages and take her away soon before the Doctor arrives.

_Miss Wijewardena has dry socks for you,_ Razor adds, _and anti-Irons limericks._ Ranju Wijewardena, a Cyborganic kid, has stayed with them since her repersoning a few weeks ago. Though disconnected from Cyber broadcasts, she still hears them in her head. She distracts herself with puzzles and wordplay.

Bill rounds a warehouse corner and finds a young White woman lying in the mud. She’s supine, her left hand smashed. She lies by a diner, of all unexpected things. Covered in chrome and aerodynamic ridges, the diner shines incongruously in the pissing rain. The left front corner is crumpled, as if it’s a crashed spaceship.

The woman is short, one and a half meters tall, with a T-shirt, denim shorts, and no protective gear. Straight, center-parted brown hair frames a face with low, full cheekbones. Her perky nose slants upward. The skin wrinkles finely around her eyes and lips. She’s cute, but uncanny in her old youthfulness.

_Cute? Bah, she’s got nothing on me,_ Razor, listening in on Bill’s thoughts, interjects. _You’re right about one thing, though. That diner’s a spaceship—a TARDIS, in fact. Much classier than the Doctor’s old phone box. I’ll send agents to retrieve you and the body._

_You’re gonna bring her back? Oh, Razor!_ Bill quotes the RR motto: _Where there’s life, there’s hope!_

***

Bill rests in her bedroom, walled with upended pallets and hanging sheets. Hot water bottles dull the constant pain of her Cyber core’s interface with her biological flesh. Ranju sleeps in the guest bedroom. The dead woman rests in their surgery, her diner hiding in Offal Lane.

Bill coughs on the vinegary smell of cleanser; pain spikes. _Bad day,_ she thinks to Razor. She’s always limp the day after missions.

Razor brings tea. He has some sort of advanced tech that gives him a public disguise of bad teeth and stringy hair. Without that, he is an untanned White guy with a round head and long cheeks. His hazel eyes are hooded beneath straight brows. His blondish greyish hair recedes in a crescent from his forehead. The goatee ages him further. He perches in his power wheelchair (stolen from the hospital), neat and narrow, but wan without makeup. He’s suffering too.

_That the good tea or bad?_ Bill jokes. There’s no difference.

_Depends. You die—is bad._

Bill runs on rechargeable batteries now, but holds liquids in her mouth to soothe her throat. She sips and sighs. _That extraction in two days…_

_Yeah. Moved ‘em to Sewage Street._ Razor, anticipating their tiredness, has already delegated upcoming extractions to agents closer to the hospital. He drinks, head drooping.

Razor’s obviously spent, so Bill fixes him some grey food, then returns to rest. _Been thinking, Razor, and I know you’re a Time Lord,_ she says to him. Adjusting her hot water bottles, Bill reviews the evidence: his double heartbeats that she hears when checking on him, his familiarity with TARDISes, his past intimacy with the Doctor. _I know who you are too. Rather obvious, that, since you act like Panjandrum and call yourself an evil overlord. You’re Missy, but from another universe or something._

_This is_ my _universe,_ Razor proclaims, licking his spoon and pointing at her with it. _You told me that Missy came here from another universe, looking for a replacement Doctor, since hers died in the Time War, and now she’s got mine. And, as far as I’m concerned, she can have that traitor._ He straightens his neck as if balancing a crown on his head. _I am the true Master, and you are my dearest person._

“I’m Bill Potts,” she declares, “and I’m not calling you that. I’m also not obeying you.”

Razor shrugs, unperturbed. _You_ are _obeying me, but of your own free will. I asked you to be the heart of my revolution; you said yes._

Bill recalls Razor’s proposition. He had said that he wanted her help with RR so that he could improve his image by associating with someone more compassionate. He required her fortitude, discretion, and compliance if their partnership was to succeed. Furthermore, he added, the whole enterprise would be dank, dangerous, and dismal, just like day-to-day Dystopiaville. He would do everything he could, as he did for all RR agents, to ensure her safety, but he could promise nothing. Did she want to join him?

Used to being ignored (as by her foster mother) or laughed off (as by the Doctor), Bill had sat, dumbfounded. Here was someone telling her exactly what he wanted out of a relationship with her, as well as exactly what she could expect.

But what if she was scared or in pain? What could she expect from him? He said that he would help with the pain if he could. “Then you wouldn’t...make me do something anyway?” she had ventured.

“What? No! Why should I do this?” he had cried, his eyebrows popping up. He was still speaking with that ridiculous accent then. “You say yes—then you are mine.” He tapped his chest. “My possession, my responsibility. I take good care. I am never losing you.” A cockeyed smile.

That’s what convinced her, actually: Razor’s enumeration of the dangers. The Doctor always minimized Bill’s fears, particularly her anxiety about adventuring with a supposedly reformed Missy. The Doctor’s enemy, though, acknowledges them. He’s familiar with pain, exhaustion, and uncertainty, and Bill, now Cyborganic and frequently hurting, appreciates Razor’s realism.

Back in the present, Bill thinks that, while he may have been cruel and masterful in the past, Razor has changed. Humiliated and objectified by his time in the war, he now abhors humiliation and objectification. Cyber people, compelled to act as Irons’ life-size toy soldiers, remind him all too acutely of his own experience as the same.

Whatever Razor detests, he seeks to eliminate, and so he alleviates the suffering of Dystopiaville denizens. He repersons them, replacing servitude to Irons’ will with the freedom to direct one’s own life. With each Cyber person that he helps, Razor gains hope. He repersons himself into the master of his own future.

_Exactly!_ says Razor, listening to Bill’s thoughts. _Irons wastes Cyber tech on obedience and control. It’s much better as assistive tech. It can make people better, stronger, less panic attacky, like me._ (He has hacked a Cyber chip and stuck it in his head to reduce panic attacks.) _Foolish humans! Why use Cyber tech to kill? Better for curing pain._

Bill too severs ties with the Doctor. She rejects their conditional love. Choosing to be the revolution’s heart, she redefines herself: independent, important, and good. She and Razor are survivors, reborn, living on their own terms.

***

The next day, Razor never has a chance to reanimate the woman. He and Bill are amputating the woman’s left hand when she resurrects. Lurching up from the surgery’s barber’s chair, she glares at Razor. “You took my hand, Frankenstein!” she cries.

Bill, who only uses her power chair for long distances, sets aside her basin of offal and steps between them, holding out her arms, palms down. “Hey now. You’re safe here,” she says. “I’m Bill Potts. And that’s Razor.”

Razor flashes a crooked, ingratiating smile, turning on his pseudo-Slavic appearance. “Sorry for this unhanding of you. But I give you new one. Will be Cyber, with all the machineries, but will be very handy, yes? _Handy_ —you are getting this pun?”

“No! You’re not gonna make me your Cyber minion like Bill!” cries the woman. To Bill she says, “I’m so sorry. I got your message. I wanted to rescue you from the Cybermen, but...too late.” In a lower voice, she adds, “Taking decisive action, our intrepid heroine promptly passed out again.” She faints.

Now that he knows the woman has a mind, Razor reads it. “Interesting! She knows me, so I can’t wait for that epiphany. Anyway, my dear,” he says, turning from the woman and toward Bill, “meet Clara Oswald, the Doctor’s favoritest companion. She saved their lives, so they endured five billion years of torture for her, made her immortal, and gave her a TARDIS. Now she’s Doctor Junior! She’s also completely insufferable. Must be why she’s called the Impossible Girl.” He smirks.

Bill narrows her eyes. “Is that true?”

“I’ve never lied.”

“You called yourself a shaving implement.”

“That _is_ one of my names. It was a strategic deployment of the truth.”

“Which you’re doing again, I see—making her out as an obnoxious git. Don’t want me to leave with her, yeah?”

“She’s not good enough for you,” Razor scoffs.

You aren’t either, mate, Bill thinks, hoping he hears.

***

The next morning, Bill chats up Clara in the surgery. Since these are Clara’s quarters now, Bill brings in a plastic smiling rainbow that Razor gave her, as well as her favorite speculative fiction. (He types it up from memory.) The room remains drab and musty, but less barren.

Bill educates Clara about the true nature of the city, Cyberization, and RR. Clara ponders. “Hmmm, so our fearless protagonist has crashed into a bargain-bin dystopia run by someone who turns people into brainwashed robots. Luckily, she meets the brave, beautiful Cyberm— Cyborganic—the dashing and daring Bill Potts.”

Bill flicks her eyebrows. “Flirting with me, are you?”

“What if I am?”

“I wouldn’t mind. You’re brave and beautiful too.”

Pulling her wheeled stool closer, Bill brings up the Doctor, asking about Clara’s time with them. Clara has indeed saved all their lives. In return, the Doctor pulled her from time before her last heartbeat. She’s technically dead, but she has a universe of adventures until she decides to meet her fate.

Bill asks if she’s lonely. Clara denies it much too quickly. “I’m not alone,” she says. “There’s Ashildr, another immortal bi gal in space. We used to—” Her face stills. A twitch of pain moves across it, but Bill can’t tell if that’s from the memory or from the crash. Ashildr’s obviously her ex.

“Do you have a home—friends?” Bill asks. Clara seems like a lonely comet, speeding restlessly through space, never finding a warm star.

Clara turns conversation away from herself. She grumbles about the persistent throb in her absent left hand, and she and Bill commiserate about chronic pain. Then Clara asks about Bill’s sojourn with the Doctor. Bill sighs, then swallows. “They made me feel special, like one in seven billion. Thought that I’d do good with them, help everyone, and blaze like a beautiful star. Gave up too much, though.”

The loss of her memories is the most painful. When the alien Monks oppressed Earth, Bill imagined conversations with her dead mum to keep sane. Six months of maternal love, albeit imaginary, sustained her. She willingly sacrificed them to save the world. “But the Doctor didn’t care what I’d lost,” Bill says. “Always belittling me, they were. Know what they called me when I was overwriting the Monks with the memories of my mum? _Ridiculous girl.”_

_“Ridiculous_ means that you’re smart, creative, intuitive. It’s a compliment!” Clara cries.

“It sounded like an insult,” Bill points out flatly. “You can sort of see why I think Razor’s the lesser of two evils, yeah?”

Gasping, Clara scrunches up her nose. “The Doctor’s not evil! They’re brave and kind and—” She leans forward in her chair to emphasize her point, then crashes back, clutching her right hand around her empty left wrist. “Ow! How can my hand still hurt? It’s not even there.”

“I should let you rest.” Bill strands from the wheeled stool, tears stinging in her eyes. Clara, she thinks, as she moves slowly from the surgery, doesn’t understand.

“Um. Um. Missing Earth...again?” Ranju asks Bill, a draped sheet (one of the room partitions) trailing on her wheelchair’s handle. Lanky, brown-skinned, perhaps twelve, Ranju tilts her small, shaved head. More robotified than Bill, she has a halting, computerized voice. Cyber electronics project from her narrow torso like an old TV.

“I guess.”

“I miss...the Dominoes.” Ranju’s neighborhood is a line of rickety skyscrapers that collapse periodically. “And my mum. And my rats. Hug?” Ranju and Bill do a side hug to avoid hitting Cyber parts. “Missing is...hard.”

“Yeah.” Bill wishes that someone like Ranju would come who accepts her just as she is.

***

Two days later, Bill reads _1984._ Fluorescent lights, as yellow as sickness, hum like flies over a rubbish bin. _Power,_ she reads, _is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing._ It’s a rotten, inescapable truth, like the corpses in the streets. It’ll inspire a hundred new recruits. Whenever Bill distributes grim passages like this, RR membership increases.

Meanwhile, Bill yearns for a home—somewhere, anywhere, in the multiverse where she feels safe and whole and happy. She imagines a land as brilliant as a sunflower, a chosen family who holds her fast. _I love everything about you,_ Bill’s imaginary partner says. And Bill’s tired, hopeful Cyber heart fills with golden light.

Clara calls Bill back to the surgery. Bill enters with wary, plodding steps to find Clara twining a lock of fine brown hair around her finger. “You’re right; I wasn’t listening when you were talking about the Doctor,” Clara confesses. “I assumed that the Doctor had a duty of care to all their companions because that’s what they said to me.”

“Not to me,” says Bill softly.

“Yeah.” Clara looks into her lap. “You told me how they just stood there when you were, um, shot.”

“And then they told me to wait for them,” mutters Bill. “As if, after all that bullshit, they thought I’d trust them with my life! You know who I trust with my life? Razor—because he saved it.”

Clara nods. “Yeah. That’s what you were trying to say. I’m sorry that I didn’t listen. I’ll do better. I promise.” She slides down in the chair like she wants to disappear.

Bill uncrosses her arms. “Okay.” She sits on Clara’s left. “Let’s try again, yeah?”

So they tell each other about their lives, and the conversation moves to dead mums. Bill’s died before Bill knew her, Clara’s when she was twenty. Bill looks at her mum’s paperbacks—Octavia Butler, Tananarive Due, Ursula LeGuin—and wonders who she was. Clara guesses that Bill’s mum was a brilliant activist, just like Bill. Bill, sighing, says that’s a hard act to follow.

Clara too lives with a legacy of expectations from her mum, a special education teacher and perennial volunteer. Clara keeps asking her absent mum, _Are you proud of me yet?_ There’s never an answer. Bill says that Clara’s mum would definitely be proud to have such a smart, empathetic daughter with ambitions to improve the universe. Tentative flirting resumes.

They talk about loneliness. Bill, sick of never being good enough, wants unconditional acceptance; Clara, sick of caring for everyone, wants to be taken care of. That loneliness got them both in trouble; yearning for love, they both succumbed to the Doctor’s flattery.

Bill and Clara sacrificed themselves again and again on the Doctor’s behalf. They both lost their lives on the Doctor’s watch, yet still the Doctor wasn’t satisfied. They kept Clara from dying because they wanted an acolyte in their image—longevity, TARDIS, and all. And they asked Bill to wait for them, counting on her perpetual obedience to their commands. Bill and Clara exchange a glance. Their experiences with the Doctor may be more similar than they first seemed.

Bill and Clara envision a matchmaking service for former companions. They could support each other and help each other deal with post-Doctor life. Ideally they’d become friends.

“And, if one was trapped in a black hole of despair and dystopia, the other could sweep in heroically and free her.” Clara perks up. “Then they’d ride off to find fun and friendship and real understanding. Hypothetically, of course.”

“Of course.” Bill nods with a giggle.

Bill leaves soon after, allowing Clara some rest. Clara is so much better than Razor, Bill thinks. He’s arrogant, petulant, impulsive, and tiresomely intense. Clara, meanwhile, is mature, respectful, playful, and thoughtful. Bill can’t wait to be with someone who enjoys life.

***

Bill and Clara leave the melancholy topics of mums and Doctors. They trade witty quips—whenever they have the strength, that is. Lingering pain from Clara’s crash cuts her conversation short after a few hours. Bill, of course, deals with pain that waxes and wanes on no particular schedule.

After several days, Clara’s pain retreats enough for her to recognize Razor, who’s abandoned the disguise, as the Master. She stabs him and tries to leave the flat. Razor sends Bill a mental page: _Potts to surgery, stat. Watch out. Insufferable Girl’s down, but still armed._

Bill enters the surgery. Clara lies on the floor, scalpel in hand, glowering at Razor, who sits in his power wheelchair by the sink cabinets. Fallen instruments scatter between them. Razor holds his bleeding left forearm to his chest as he rips open gauze packets with his teeth.

“He ran...ran into me.” Clara blinks, stunned. She drops her weapon.

_Of course I did,_ Razor snaps, too exhausted to speak aloud. _You tried to attack me._ He presses a button on his chair. Short blades extend from the front of the footplate. _Be glad I didn’t use these,_ he tells Clara. He addresses Bill: _She’s bruised. I didn’t break anything. Maybe I should have._

Clara’s in too much pain to stand, but Razor’s bleeding takes precedence. Bill dons gloves and bandages his wound. As she’s scrubbing out, she questions Clara: “Why did you attack him? What was he doing?”

_Changing bandages,_ Razor says. To Clara, he says, _If Miss Potts helps you back to your chair, will we have to restrain you for our own safety?_ Clara says no, so Bill guides her to the barber’s chair.

Between pants and flinches, Clara resumes the thread of their earlier conversation. “It’s not about what you were doing at that moment,” she says to Razor. “It’s about what you have done—what you will do.”

_You mean taking over this rubbish heap, outlawing forcible Cyber conversion, repersoning everyone, and then adding some more ramps and lifts?_ Razor, safely stationed across the room from Clara, lifts his eyebrows at her.

“I know you,” says Clara, whose eyebrows and voice slant down. “You never do anything good. It’s always for your own power-hungry ends.”

_Well, obviously,_ says Razor. _If Cyber conversion is forbidden, then I don’t have to see other people forcibly weaponized just like me. Same with repersoning. Fuck suffering! I hate it. Of course I’m going to get rid of it for my own benefit._

“That’s not the way you work, though.” Clara sneers. “Your goals are always about domination and control. You take advantage of others’ pain.”

“Yeah,” speaks up Bill, now leaning against the counter next to Razor, as she rests from the exertion of aiding Clara. “That’s exactly what he does. Even he admits it himself. But what’s to his benefit is also to our benefit: no more Cyberization, no more Irons, no more NPs, freedom from fear, maybe even better infrastructure. He’s doing it for himself because he’s a selfish bastard, but you can see how it’s helping everyone here, yeah? Even you?”

But Clara is on a rant. “You never help anyone,” she cries at Razor, “not when you can hurt them. You thrive on suffering, and it’s crippled you. You’re nothing but a twisted excuse for a person. You’re some half-robotic thing, dependent on machines.”

A numbness, a burning pain of disappointment, gathers in Bill’s half-robotic core, radiating out to her limbs. Is that what Clara sees her as—a half-mechanical _thing?_ Abruptly tired, she collapses onto a wheeled stool. “Clara, did you just call Razor a Cyber person...as an insult?”

“Well, he is.” Clara waves her hand weakly in Razor’s direction. “He’s half machine, and he clearly has his empathy removed.”

“You do realize that _I’m_ a Cyber person, yeah?” Bill reminds her. “Me. Are you saying I’m an insult now?”

Clara shakes her head. “No, not you. You’ve been repersoned.”

Razor advances on Clara, his face drawing into creases of anger. “My dearest person,” he says aloud, gesturing to Bill, “is exactly what you describe. She is half robotic, half machine, dependent on advanced technology so that she can live. You think she’s a thing?” His eyes darken to nearly brown as he goes on. “Shut up, Insufferable Girl. I survived my own unsuccessful objectification, and I now have very little tolerance for people like you and Irons who would turn people into things.”

“Turning people into things? That’s your game, not mine!” Clara yells.

Razor shakes his head and, having used up his burst of energy, reverts to telepathy. _No. Not here. Not now._

“And I’m not like Irons.” Clara tries to hit a defiant note.

“But y-you basically said yourself,” Bill speaks up, her voice trembling, “that Cyber people are twisted, robotic, emotionless things. You implied that I was a thing—that I’m not human enough to be a person. And that’s exactly what Irons thinks—that some people aren’t worthy enough to be people.”

“Bill, oh God, no, I didn’t mean that.” Clara gulps. “I just meant—” She indicates Razor. “He’s the one with the deformed body and mind and crippled by evil—”

_Oh, so_ that’s _why I’m in pain all the time!_ says Razor brightly. _It’s punishment for my wicked ways. I never knew!_

“That’s wrong,” Bill says, shaking her head. “I know that Razor has been cruel and dehumanizing in the past, but that’s not the point. The point is that disabled people aren’t automatically horrible. People with disabilities are just that. We’re people. We’re not pathetic; we’re not evil, and we’re certainly not disgusting. I’m a person.” Strength condenses in Bill’s voice. “I’m a human being, even if I can’t eat or run or live without pain. We all have limitations, but we’re all people: me, you, Ranju, even Razor.”

“He’s a genocidal maniac!”

_No shit, Sherlock._ Razor crosses his arms _. But my amorality has nothing to do with my abilities or my appearance. I’ve been amoral and short, amoral and unmoisturized, amoral with emo hair, and now I’m amoral, fucking fabulous, and the user of a weaponized wheelchair. None of those traits are related. I rest my case._

Clara groans. “Your delivery needs work. Take notes from Bill; she’s smarter, sweeter, and hotter than you.” Her voice lowers, pleading, as she twists a loose lock of hair: “Bill, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that _you_ were like that.”

“But you said that about Razor,” Bill says in a low voice. “You compared him to me as an insult. I thought you...” She hangs her head.

“I’m s-so s-sorry,” Clara says again, her voice quavering, as she shivers.

“Me too,” mutters Bill, who, like a comet, feels frozen all over.

Awkward silence falls again. Then Clara speaks up: “Uh, I’m kind of cold. Can I please have a blanket?”

Razor drives to the cabinet, pulls a blanket or two into his lap, then stops just out of Clara’s reach. _Well, now, I don’t know if I can help you. I’m just a twisted thing,_ he says, expelling that word like vomit _, crippled by evil. As far as you’re concerned, I am constitutionally incapable of giving a fuck about you because I use a wheelchair._

Clara rolls her eyes. “Um, Bill—”

“No!” Razor cries aloud. _You will not speak to her, not until you realize that she’s a person and treat her like one. If you want anything, you ask me. And address me as the person I am. Use my name._

Clara seeks Bill’s eyes. “Bill—God, I didn’t mean that you were an insult.”

Bill, her arms crossed tightly against her chest, just stares at Clara, tears in her eyes.

Clara finally realizes that Bill won’t come to her rescue. “Razor, please...”

_That’s not my name. You know my name. Say it._

“Master.” Clara grits her teeth.

_E-nun-ci-ate._ He gestures at his mouth with a spin of his wrist, as if unrolling mellifluous words.

“Yes, Master.”

“For fuck’s sake.” Bill stalks out as Razor finally dumps the blanket in Clara’s lap.

***

The next morning, Razor dresses in steel grey with a subtle sheen, with black shadow hollowing his cheeks. Outside the surgery, he gulps painkillers. He doesn’t stand often, but his imminent performance requires a position of superiority over the audience. Easing from his chair, he balances with lightweight forearm crutches. Bill supervises him, arms folded.

Swinging into the surgery, Razor stoops over Clara. He speaks in a low, harsh voice: “This is _my_ domain, and there are two rules here. First, use your head. If your foolish escape attempt yesterday had succeeded, you’d have rushed straight into the arms of the Night Patrol. Then you would have been Cyberized into a NP, torching my safe houses and killing my people. You would have ruined _my_ revolution. So think before you speak or act. Do you understand?”

Clara pushes back against her seat in rigid alarm. Still she snarks at him. “You wouldn’t rescue me and reperson me? I’m shocked.”

“I’d try, but I can only do so much!” Razor’s crutches flash like stilettos as he stalks around her. “I have enough pain already. I don’t need anymore, so don’t make me deal with yours. Stay safe, and it’ll be easier for everyone.” He lifts his right crutch, an exclamation point, toward her. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” says Clara in a flat, subdued voice.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, Master.”

Razor pauses before Clara’s leather chair. Sweat rolls from his hairline, and his arms tremble. Bill, thinking him on the verge of collapse, moves to his side. He leans against her, one arm around her back. “The second rule,” he says to Clara, “is to do as I say. You’re surrounded by disabled people here. People! People! People! Not things. People! So shut up about soulless robots crippled by evil.” He puts more of his weight against Bill, who breathes in sharply as her legs begin to tingle. Letting Bill go, Razor supports himself on his crutches again.

Clara addresses Bill. “Bill, please listen to me. I wasn’t thinking when I spoke yesterday.” Clara would be clinging to Bill’s hands if Bill were close enough. “I was just so stunned. He’s the Master, and—and—but—I—you are a person. You’re an indefatigably capable heroine in your own right—”

“Oh shut up.” Razor swats Clara’s words aside like a bug. “Get me my chair,” he requests of Bill, who retrieves it for him. He collapses onto the seat. He gasps; he sweats; he downs more painkillers. Then he fixes Clara with eyes sharp enough to cut. “So do you want to survive?”

Looking between Bill and Razor, Clara finally realizes that the two are in deadly earnest. Her face settles into resignation. She recognizes that Razor means every single word of his Dystopiaville code of conduct. Furthermore, any infractions of that code could threaten not just Clara, but RR as a whole. “Yes, Master,” she says, lowering her eyes.

“Then you’ll obey me.”

“Yes, Master.”

_It’s so nice to hear someone say that again._ Razor, smirking, obviously plans to gloat every time Clara speaks to him. “Ow!” He folds up in his chair, a spasm of pain running through him. _So much for going to the TARDIS today, he remarks. I thought I might be able to, but—_

“My TARDIS?” says Clara. “Why?”

_So I can fix it,_ says Razor, _send you packing, and return to my work here without ever seeing your insufferable face again._

“Mister...Razor sir.” Ranju wheels in. Her fidgets express excitement that her flat voice cannot. “Our favorite...doctor...is here in case...Clara wants...a hand. Hah. Hah.”

“Uh, with what?” Clara frowns. Razor says it’s to see if she wants a replacement for her lost limb. It would be Cyber tech, though, and Bill notes that Clara obviously has strong objections to Cyber tech.

“No!” Clara holds up her remaining hand. “Please! It’s okay. I can at least listen.”

_Oh, you’ll do more than that,_ Razor says. _Doctor Kevin Yoon used to be the foremost surgeon on complex Cyberization cases. They developed the first repersoning operations, which I then refined and perfected. Then Irons caught them repersoning and—well—depersoned them. My dearest person may be the heart of the resistance, but Doctor Kevin Yoon is the catalyst. Now they’re my advisor on Cyborganic health. So behave yourself._ He glares expectantly at Clara.

“Yes, Master.”

Doctor Kevin Yoon enters the surgery. Though repersoned, they resemble the Cyber soldier they once were. Silver armor covers their torso and limbs; neon green eye lights and a horizontal mouth grille, embedded in the front of their helmet, suggest a face.

“Hello...Ms. Oswald,” says Doctor Yoon. “I’m Doctor Kevin...Yoon, but you can...call me Doctor, Doc, Kevin, Yoonie…anything, except...for _Hey, tin...can!”_

Clara’s eyeballs nearly fall out of her head as Doctor Yoon reaches forward to shake her hand. “Uh. Hi. Doctor? Doctor. Doctor Yoon. Hi?” But she contains her alarm.

Having been apprised by Razor that Clara is unfamiliar with armored Cyborganics, Doctor Yoon shows off their forearm gun mounts. The first, now a squirt gun, now wards off their pesky spouse. The right, now a jack-in-the-box, entertains their daughter.

“Oh, a kid? How old is she?” Clara the former nanny sits up straighter at the mention of a familiar subject. She and Doctor Yoon exchange pleasantries about children.

Doctor Yoon promises Clara that they can procure a Cyber replacement for her hand. “But,” they add, “I hear...that you have...misgivings...about us...about the tech. So let’s...talk a bit.”

Bill, Razor, and Ranju withdraw. “Hope she learns,” mutters Bill.

Razor narrows his eyes through a slat in the pallet wall at Clara. He loads all his skepticism into a single snort. _Has she apologized yet?_

“Haven’t really wanted to talk to her,” mumbles Bill. Razor grunts in understanding, and the two of them continue listening in.

Charmed by Doctor Yoon, Clara readily accepts Cyborganics as people, no matter their level of robotification or autonomy. However, she struggles to comprehend Razor’s interest in helping Cyber people to freedom. Why is Razor giving up Cyber people their autonomy back when the Master is all about controlling others?

Razor sticks his head in the room: _I’m not giving up control; I’m just gaining it in a different way. If I help the denizens of Dystopiaville, they’ll be grateful to me. They’ll be thankful and devoted, and that will last long beyond any psychic compulsion I could cast. And that’s how I’m fueling my defeat of Irons, repersoning of Cyber people, and ascent to dictator._

“He’s exploiting Dystopiaville!” Clara points out. Doctor Yoon shrugs. Past rebellions were brutally crushed, so people are intimidated. If Razor wants to try revolting, he’s welcome. Besides, he’s succeeding. Dystopiaville will follow along until Razor usurps Irons; then they’ll oust him and form a representative democracy. In Doctor Yoon’s opinion, the exploitation is mutual.

“But you and Bill could lead the resistance much better. You’re a doctor!” Clara cries. “You’re meant to help people.”

“I am...in constant...pain,” replies Doctor Yoon. “I want...to help, but...I only have...so much...energy.”

“Oh,” says Clara.

Will Clara learn that people are vulnerable, fallible, and limited? Bill wonders. She seems to think like the Doctor, who saw hesitation, exhaustion, and physical limits as flaws to overcome. But your limits are like the skin around the body of your life. They protect you from harm. Bill’s all for challenging yourself and shooting for the stars, but not for the Doctor’s reckless denial of pain.

Suffering is part of life. You acknowledge it, test it, and learn to live with it. Knowledge of your limits, like your skin, keeps you in one piece.

***

That evening, Bill gets on the encrypted shortwave frequency and delivers the _1984_ quote to RR propaganda. “We’ll post it across Tinder Town tonight,” promises the agent, naming a district of wooden tenements that burn regularly.

“Thanks so much!” says Bill. “But it’s not really urgent.”

“You’re our top priority.”

“What about Razor?”

“He barely says please,” notes the agent. “You always do.”

Signing off, Bill enters the living room, settling in an upholstered chair. The worn carpet doesn’t insulate the grave-cold concrete floor. She puts her feet up on a dilapidated crate as the near-constant ache in her legs returns.

Did Clara really mean that about disabled people being twisted and repulsive? The words poke and bite in Bill’s mind like scalpel blades. Bill’s wheezy Cyber lungs, her inability to eat, and her constant pain are differences, variations on the many ways of being a person. They don’t mean that she’s cruel or disgusting. They’re facts of life without moral value.

Bill would rather not be disabled. She hates the chronic pain, but she’s not abhorrent herself for being disabled. She is disabled and different. She is also worthy of respect, freedom, and autonomy, just like all other Cyber people and other disabled people, including Razor and Clara.

Now that Clara is without a left hand, she’s disabled too. Even when she gets a Cyber replacement, that difference will be a fact of her life. Maybe she’ll change her thinking when she reckons with her new status. But does Bill want to leave with someone who, like the Doctor, equates disability with failure, even moral weakness? Bill sighs.

Razor rolls in after conferring with the head of RR logistics. _Ms. Kim says everything’s good for the next extractions. And that_ 1984 _quote is going out?_ He transfers slowly from his chair to a deflated sofa. _How’d you do that so fast?_

_I said please._

Razor huffs in weariness. _I’m killing that dead girl soon,_ he says conversationally. _She’s a pain in my...entire self._

_You are not,_ Bill contradicts him.

_Well, I want to._

_Why?_

_Because she’s an insufferable fool,_ he snaps _. Hurting my dearest person! She deserves to—_

_To die?_ Bill challenges him. _That’s not far off from what Irons thinks about Cyber people, yeah?_

_Of course it’s not. They’re a sadistic, power-hungry, genocidal bastard,_ _and so am I._

_Yeah, well, just remember—murder’s like a tacky statement piece. It overwhelms your whole outfit._ Bill has discovered that fashion metaphors go over well at times like these. Razor plays the fabulous, fatuous foe with as much zest as Missy, but he takes his personal and social appearance seriously. He just needs a reminder to do so, even when his temper flares.

He sighs. _Ugh, you’re right._ Grudging silence _. Fine then! I won’t kill her. I’ll just fantasize about it._

***

The next day, Bill feels like one of the flat’s sofas: slumpy, faded, worn out. Nothing seems worth doing. If she read _1984_ for more quotes, she’d cry from the bleakness. If she talked to Clara... Well, she’s not quite ready to do that. She’s just dull, clouded, as worn and dingy as the Dystopiaville sky.

With Razor out working on Clara’s TARDIS, Bill staffs the RR communications hub in their flat. Clara approaches her several times, but Bill always busies herself with some task. She receives a shortwave report from the head of the Tinder Town safe house. Five kids, inspired by Bill’s _1984_ quote, now want to fill the whole city with subversive slogans. At least someone is listening to Bill, even if it’s not Clara.

Bill then hears from Butcher’s Block. The two repersoned Cyborganics from the safe house have secretly returned home after recovery. After that, Doctor Yoon comes on the shortwave with an update about Clara’s new Cyber hand. Their quick progress—and the buoyant cheer with which they speak—momentarily lifts Bill’s spirits.

But then Bill ends the call. She hears a tentative cough. Clara lurks in the doorway, holding her left arm to her chest. She’s purposely blocking Bill’s escape route. Now they have to talk.

“So your Cyber hand is coming along,” says Bill before Clara can open her mouth. “Doctor Yoon has the flesh-to-wire interface up and running. As soon as they do some fitting adjustments and tests, it should be good to go.”

“Wow! That’s fast!” Clara grins. “Doctor Yoon really is a genius, huh? I can’t wait!”

Bill bites her lower lip. “Not worried then, are you, that being robotic will make you less of a person, yeah?”

“Oh, Bill, no!” Clara’s face falls. She trips over all the self-blame, apologies, and reassurances that Bill has heard before. “You’re not less of a person at all. You and all the other Cyber people are people just like me, no matter what you can do or what you can’t. I completely fucked up by using you as an insult.

“But he—him—the Master,” she says in a lower and more venomous voice, “is such a—” She leaves out the word. “I guess I conflated the two—the way he looks and the way he acts. And then I extended it to you too. I’m so very sorry. Oh...what can I do to make it up to you?”

Immediately Razor’s reason for fixing Clara’s ship comes to Bill’s mind. She could go away and then Bill would never see her again. “Don’t know,” she says. “I have to rest.” She moves past Clara and heads to her room.

***

Razor comes back from Clara’s TARDIS after dark. “How is she?” Bill brings bad tea and worse dinner to his bedside that evening.

_Snarky little shit, like her owner._ He downs the food in seconds, then lies back again. _I can fix her in a few days. The TARDIS, of course. The human is beyond help._

As much as Clara irritates Razor, he compares her ship favorably to the Doctor’s. Bill will like it, he says. Bill’s favorite authors are in the library, her favorite styles in the closet. There’s a room full of sunflowers too. He yanks one from a pocket of his chair, half flattened, and tears spring to Bill’s eyes. _Oh fuck, not the tears! Is it because it’s squashed?_

“No, it’s b-b-beautiful.” Bill cradles the soft, gleaming flower, so much more alive than anything in Dystopiaville. “It’s just that I’ll never see any of it.”

_Why not?_

Bill swallows her shakiness. “Not sure I’m going with her.”

_What?_

“She’s not...you.”

_Obviously. She’s better._

“You understand, though, about being disappointed by the Doctor, about suffering, about pain and limitations.”

_Right, you’re suffering here, so you should leave._ Razor flicks his hands in shooing motions.

“She called me a Cyber person as an insult!”

_She called_ me _a Cyber person,_ Razor corrects. _So she’s got some unexamined ableism._ Shrugging, he switches to Razor voice. _We all are having faults. And plus—you have to admit that she is not batshit sadist like me._

“She basically said that I was a thing, Razor.”

_Ach, well, aside from that—she will do anything for you. Maybe you just use her to get out of here. Then you are putting her in a ditch and going your own way. You know you are too good for this place, yes? Maybe this is your only chance. Take it!_

***

After dinner, Ranju knocks on one of Bill’s pallet walls, seeking advice of her own. She’s thinking about Leroyah, her first crush. Should she reconnect with them, considering that they don’t know that Ranju is a Cyborganic?

Ranju has her doubts. “You know what... _Cyber person_ …is?” She supplies anagrams for the phrase: _“Be corner...spy. Be...scorn prey._ No one...likes us.” She claps her hands between her knobby knees.

“Awww, Ranju.” Bill pats the bed next to her. Ranju transfers from her wheelchair to nestle by Bill’s side. Bill puts an arm around her. “You’re worried how Leroyah might react, huh?”

“Yeah. Um. Um. If Leroyah’s...not...Cyborganic, they might not... understand.”

Bill holds Ranju close on the saggy mattress. “Yeah. There’s a lot of prejudice against us. But if you and Leroyah were really close in the past, maybe it’s worth talking to them.”

Ranju shakes her head. “I’d have to...do all that work...explaining. I’m so...so tired...already. So...sick of...being scorn prey. Just want...someone who...understands.” She closes her eyes.

“You want someone who already knows that Cyborganics are people too.”

Ranju nods. “Is that...bad? Wrong?”

“No.” Bill shakes her head. “It makes sense. You don’t want to be with someone who needs to be convinced that you’re a person. You want someone you can be your whole self with, Cyber bits and all.”

“Yeah,” agrees Ranju. She nods off against Bill.

Bill stares up at the ceiling. It’s so low that the thick, water-stained beams seem just a few centimeters from her head. She whispers to her imaginary parent: “Mum, I can’t go with Clara. She’s better than the Time Lords in some ways, but she still thinks that Cyber people are subhuman. I want even better than that. I want someone who accepts me.”

“You deserve it,” Bill says for her mum, source of all the confidence that Bill can’t yet own.

Bill continues. “Plus Clara has some _Defenders_ serial running in her head where she’s Hope, the wonderful White heroine, and I’m the sidekick. She thinks I’m like a prop in her story, but I have my own story.”

She imagines her mum smiling and saying, “Of course you’re the star of your own story. You’re my bright, beautiful constellation girl, and you always figure out what to do. Trust yourself, yeah?”

Bill promises herself: “I will. Thanks, Mum.”

***

Late at night, with Razor and Ranju sleeping, Bill tiptoes into Clara’s room. She hangs her head. “Just so you know...I’m staying here,” she says. Though her tears feel burning hot, the perpetual raw chill pimples up her skin.

“I figured.” Clara twists her mouth, her eyes running over too. “I knew it when you didn’t want to talk to me.” She sniffles. “I wanted to save you so badly, but I ruined it.”

Bill meets Clara’s eyes: not quite a glare, but close. “I don’t want saving. I want respect, love, a relationship of equals.”

“Shit.” Clara looks down. “Yeah, you totally deserve that. And I’m so very sorry that I hurt you.”

“Yeah. I…” Bill is a comet, surrounded by darkness, with cold loneliness at her core. She feels like the rotten dampness of Dystopiaville might swallow her whole.

***

A few days later, Razor flies Clara’s fully repaired ship to the alley outside the flat. Then he enters the living room in a flourish of acrid Dystopiaville air.

Razor has dressed for the occasion again. His aubergine suit, though not tailored for him, stretches enough to make him svelte and sharp. Makeup reddens his cheeks and purples his lips, brightening him, amplifying his power. His eyes, outlined in dark blues and highlighted by golden diagonals, shine. He smiles widely, ecstatic.

“Damn!” Bill remarks. She sees a flash of who he could be without a revolution to run: witty, high-spirited, even fun. What would it be like to talk fashion with him?

“I know.” Razor smirks.

Clara clenches her new left fist, a black Cyber hand, integrated into her flesh by Doctor Yoon. “You stole my clothes? And used my make-up?” she cries at Razor. “Bitch!”

Razor leans on his crutches, breathing labored. “A gendered insult? Check your internalized misogyny.”

“Let’s be civil,” Bill says.

“Thank you so much for your hospitality, _Master.”_ Simpering, Clara curtsies.

Razor inclines his chin. “You are dismissed.” Remote formality maintains his semblance of superiority and, crucially, takes less energy than all other responses.

“Bill…” Clara faces her and sighs, tears in her eyes.

“Clara…” Bill, sniffling, does the same.

Clara takes Bill’s hands in her own, searching her eyes. “Bill,” she says, her voice gentled by wonder. “Your curiosity, your enthusiasm, your passion—I love it. I thought that all left me when I sacrificed myself to the Doctor and the time winds, but you— You give me hope, and you deserve to be home and happy and safe, so...thank you.”

“You give me hope too, Clara,” says Bill, which is true enough. “Now I know that people know I’m here. Someone will come for me...I...hope.”

“They will. And remember—you’re amazing. You’re so much more than the Doctor’s companion or the heart of the Master’s revolution. Time Lords don’t define you.” In a lower voice, Clara adds aside, “And maybe one of these days I’ll believe that too.”

“You should. You’re so much more than the Doctor’s Impossible Girl.” Bill squeezes Clara’s hands encouragingly. “You’re a teacher, an adventurer, an immortal bi gal in space, a storyteller!”

“I have to tell stories.” Clara’s smile folds bitterly. “Words, words, words—I fill myself with words. I’m scared of all that black-hole silence inside. But you’re not. Why? How do you do that? Why am I still blathering? Who cares? See ya!” She kisses Bill on the cheek and slips from her orbit forever.

***

Bill looks at the sunflower Razor brought her from Clara’s ship. She might never see another in her life. She sobs inconsolably, even though Ranju hugs her for a while. Finally she loses her energy.

Rolling over, Bill sees Razor at the end of her bed, watching her in the jaundiced fluorescent light. He too is crying, banishing tears with precise dabs that leave his eye makeup in place. Is he crying because of her?

He dries his eyes, coming intimately close. “Let me tell you secret.” His Razor voice, husky and buzzing, masks his tenderness from himself. “I do not hope for any things whatsoever. I do not need the hope because I make my desires into the truth. I am creator of self, architect of this universe! Now, my dear, that your life is binding with mine, I do the same for you.”

Then he changes. “For once, you _will_ obey me,” he says in his regular voice. His eyes level with hers, but with no psychic push behind them. Yet he nods when he speaks, and it’s more than a promise. He believes it so hard that it’s the truth. “I am the Master, and you are going home. Believe it.”

Bill knows his abilities. He brings life, freedom, and power to those without. He endures the cruelest misfortunes. He embodies hope, creating reality by speaking it. “Yes!” she says. “I’m Bill Potts, and I’m going to find my way.”


End file.
